I planned to write another “simplify your holidays” post but I loved this news story from last week. A couple in New York City have found the ultimate way to simplify their lives. They live in an apartment that’s only 175 square feet. Sheez, my first apartment was at least 500 square feet. And that was pretty tiny.
What I really admire – and admit I could never do – is that they have pared their furnishings down to a bed, a bench, a TV, a bookshelf, and a cappachino maker. Oh, and two cats. They stash a lot of their clothes at strategically located dry cleaners on the way to their offices. They don’t cook, so they have no need for groceries, and kitchen stuff. They don’t even have a trash can, as they can walk out into the hall and throw stuff directly into the trash chute. The couple admits they are not homebodies; preferring to be out and about rather than hanging out at home.
The concept fascinates me, but I doubt I could live that pared down for very long. Get rid of my books? Family photos? My Elvis clock? And I do like to cook meals now and then. I lived out a duffle bag for 10 days on vacation in Mexico a few years ago and totally enjoyed not lugging a lot of stuff around. I periodically purge my possessions to get rid of stuff I keep out of habit, not because I love it.
Think it’s time to purge again. It will be a good way to start the new year.
Every year it seems that we kill ourselves cooking for a Thanksgiving meal that lasts about half an hour. While I love having a big meal with friends and family around the table, there are 
several ways to cut down on the stress and work of Thanksgiving dinner.
1. Have everybody be responsible for a dish. My mother in law usually insists on bringing the turkey, then leaves the leftovers for us. Yay! When guests ask “What can I bring?” I am delighted to tell them. This accomplishes two things: less work for us; and includes them in the feast. Both are desirable.
2. Whole foods simply and nicely prepared beat processed and elaborate foods anytime. I discovered a recipe years ago for vegetables tossed in olive oil and garlic and herbs and roasted in the oven. It takes minutes to prepare and always gets raves. I’ve never understood the appeal for green beans drowned in cream of mushroom soup and canned onion rings anyway.
3. Forget about “perfect.” So what if there’s no centerpiece? (I always forget to create one.) Or your dishes are mismatched? (Some of mine are chipped, too.) For me, perfect is good company, plenty of food, and several bottles of wine.
For simpler recipes, check out: Real Simple, the Food Network, All Recipes, Simply Recipes, and Sunset Magazine.
Now that I’ve recovered from my Halloween Candy Sugar Hangover, I realized that The Official Holiday Season Has Begun. (Oh Joy.)
Shoot, I’m still raking leaves and trying to find time to put the plastic over the sliding glass door to keep the drafts out. I’m not ready to think about Celebrating The Holidays, especially the way most of the women’s magazines say you must.
I have better things to do than make stunning centerpieces with matching little placeholders out of stuff I find in the backyard. I also do not want to bake, send Christmas cards, or make all of my gifts. I have a job. I have a big pile of books I’d like to read. I’m trying to exercise regularly. I have 3 pairs of pants I’ve been trying to find time to hem since August. I have 2 blogs that I write for my business and for fun. (This is the fun one, as I get to rant here when I want.)
So, this is my rant. Let’s declutter the holidays. Here’s my list of suggestions to start. (I’m going to add to this throughout the month.)
1. Make Thanksgiving a potluck. Less work for everybody and a lot more fun. Ask everyone who wants leftovers to bring their own containers.
2. Stop doing any traditions you hate. Chances are you’re doing them because you’ve always done them and nobody really cares whether you do or not. So don’t make the complicated recipes you don’t like and don’t go to Whoever’s party that you dread and don’t put up the 12 strings of lights on the house that takes an entire day and then another day to take down.
3. Get rid of holiday decorations that you no longer like. Have an exchange with your friends or just send them to a charity or, if they’re old and fraying, falling apart, or downright dangerous, throw them away. You’ll have less stuff to store and keep track of. Don’t buy new decorations either.
4. Cut down your card list or stop sending cards entirely. I also like the idea of sending a letter after New Year’s.
5. Cut down your gift list or agree to draw names for a gift exchange. My family stopped exchanging gifts when we realized we were mostly exchanging gift cards. In recent years, we’ve challenged each other to find interesting gifts for under $20.
6. The ultimate decluttering – leaving town for the holidays for a vacation and not to visit relatives. My ideal place would be a beach with waiters to bring me drinks with little umbrellas in them.
Next time I’ll list some great sites with more ideas.
I was pleasantly surprised by how many articles I found under “greening your Halloween.” Halloween truly is a holiday where you can recycle, and reuse for the best results in costumes and decorations.
I really think that most of the fun in Halloween lies in being someone else and using stuff around the house to become that person. Commercial costumes in stores are kind of lame, unless you want to lay out some serious cash. The best ones are either handmade by someone with a lot of time on their hands or improvised from stuff around the house. (I’ve always been one of those improvise-at-the-last-minute types, myself.)
Here’s some of the better suggestions I found, and some links to more info on the subject:
1. Recycle your old Halloween costumes. Either wear it again if it’s been a few years, or have an exchange with friends.
2. Make your Halloween costume from all the stuff you have lying around that you’ve been meaning to take to Goodwill one of these days.
3. Give the kids reusuable bags to put their candy in.
4. Buy organic candy to give out.
5. Recycle your decorations – reuse stuff from last year or exchange stuff with friends. How many plastic bats do you really want around the house anyway?
6. Combine forces with your friends and neighbors to throw a Halloween Party using all of your decorations, recycled costumes, and featuring organic harvest-y foods and candy.
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/2009/10/15/simple-tips-to-green-your-halloween/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/halloween-candy-ideas-treehugger-holiday-guides.php
http://support.nature.org/site/PageServer?pagename=envirotips_200710&autologin=true
I love my xeric front yard. What I love most about it is that I can pretty much ignore it most of the time and it still looks pretty good. During the summer, I might wander out there every 2-3 weeks and weed. This year, we had so much rain here in the Denver metro area I watered twice. The plants actually didn’t like all that water. They droop.
All of the plants are native or from similar climates that thrive on rock hard clay soil, hot days, cool nights, and practically no rain. No sissy plants live here. Any fussy ones died off years ago. I’ve got grasses, shrub roses, lots of lavendar, some succulents, wild four o’clocks, iris, cosmos, California poppy, a bunch of other stuff I forgot the names of and weedy sunflowers that sprang up out of the blue. It’s Darwinian gardening at its best.
Now, after another season of benign neglect, it’s time to wrap up the season. I’d plant more bulbs, but every winter I get frustrated when the tulips get confused and start coming up in February. The front yard faces south, and never quite freezes. One or two warm days and I see little tulip leaves emerging from the ground – or the snow. “Not now! Go back!” I say, but they always ignore me. Besides, I forgot where all of the bulbs are and always seem to dig the old ones up when I’m planting new ones.
So, I’ll spend some time tomorrow morning clearing out the dead four o’clocks littering the front walk and pull out withered sunflowers and cosmos. I’ll leave the dried grasses intact until spring; I like to see them moving in the breezes. I’ll also enjoy pulling out the now-dead bindweed – the bane of my garden – knowing that won’t grow back until spring.
I won’t make the yard too neat, though. The dried out plants look suitably spooky for Halloween night. Maybe I’ll put a couple of pumpkins on the front stoop. They’ll look good with the dead geraniums if I don’t have the energy to empty those out and put the pots away.
By March I’ll be ready to start again. Big rush of energy in spring, followed by benign neglect all summer. It’s my personal gardening cycle.
I hate to wash my car by hand. I would rather spend the $6 to drive to my local car wash, put it in neutral and be magically guided through the soaping, rinsing, waxing, and drying cycles, ending with a clean car. It’s my idea of a Disneyland ride. Plus, washing your car at home means having to clean up afterwards and then shower because you’re filthy from the effort. See why I’d rather go through the magical car wash?
So I was really pleased to discover that washing your car at a car wash is better for the environment. When you wash your car at home, all of the gunk that comes off – traces of oil, antifreeze, road salts and general crud – go into the storm drains and pollute local rivers and creeks. You also use a lot of water. Car washes, in comparison, are subject to waste water laws. Their wastewater is either recycled at a wastewater plant or recycled on site. Automatic car washes also use a lot less water.
So would you be even more ecologically responsible if you don’t wash your car at all? Car care experts point out that not washin your car at all leads to trashing your car’s paint, and also even affects the aerodynamics of the car. A neglected car would presumably need to be replaced sooner.
How about letting a good rainstorm clean off your car? Nice try, but rain won’t get the worst of the gunk off. Also, if you live in a really polluted area, acid rain might eat your finish off sooner.
So, to be optimally responsible, wash your car now and then (my window is usually every few months, if I think about it, unless it gets to that “can’t stand to touch it” stage) at a car wash, where the water is responsibly recycled.
September 27th, 2009
Mary
Scenario:
The year 2209. (Perhaps a Tuesday?) An intrepid archeologist digging in an American garbage landfill comes upon thousands of preserved plastic baggies of……doggie do? “Boy,” he says, “people in those days saved the damnest things.”
Anybody with a dog has probably considered the question of what to do with all of their pet’s “output.” If you walk your dog on a regular basis you probably have jackets stuffed with plastic bags and eye new purchases that come in the house with “don’t throw that bag away!” (When we switched to resusable bags for groceries, it took months to get rid of the plastic bag stash. Now, I hoarde the few that come in.) I also plan my walking routes through the parks in my neighborhood that have the most trashcans. There’s something vaguely weird about carrying your dog’s poo in a little plastic bag all around the neighborhood.
Anyway, I did some research on what pet owners can do to reduce their dog’s considerable impact upon their back yards and nearby parks. Here’s what I discovered:
1. Urban Agriculture Notes of Canada gives detailed instructions on how to make a pet waste composter for your back yard. Pretty slick, but they do warn that their experience was with one small dog. Also, you can use the compost on ornamental plants but not on food plants. There’s a few other sites that explain the process. Just search on “composting dog poop.”
2. My sister once tried to explain her failure to clean up after her own dog when walking by saying “It’s organic. It will decompose.” Nice try, sis. You should always clean up after your dog in the park or on a trail as the waste gets into storm drains and local waterways, causing bacteria levels that upset algae growth. Not to mention that it looks disgusting all over the place.
3. On their website Ecocycle also advocates scooping waste into plastic bags rather than trying to compost it. They say it’s better for the local ecosystem. Several other city sites advise bagging rather than trying to flush waste or compost it. Flushing it could easily overwhelm the sewer systems and improper composting could pollute local waterways.
There was a lot more, but I started getting kind of grossed out. Scooping the poop is not my favorite pasttime, but my yard is a lot more pleasant if I do it on a regular basis. I was glad to find out that my bagging procedure isn’t all that bad, compared to letting the waste contaminate the storm drains. Just please do all of us a favor: clean up after your dog in the park. Nobody likes to see it, and nobody likes to step in it!
Maggie and I thank you.
September 19th, 2009
Mary
Let me say upfront that I believe in recycling. I also think that it’s a pain in the #@!. Our HOA voted to end curbside recycling and now have a big rollaway dumpster for recyclables near the clubhouse. Is it still environmentally conscious to have to drive your recyclables over to be recycled?
So, we usually wait until the bin is overflowing and we absolutely have to get rid of the stuff. I think everyone else in the neighborhood does this at the same time. We’ve had to leave the stuff next to the dumpster because it’s jammed to the top with stuff.
Apparently a few of the residents took the word “recycle” to also mean “dump garbage.” There have been complaints of people dumping old tires, bags of kitchen garbage, and god-knows-what-else over there. I really feel that anyone caught dumping trash in the rollaway should have to clean out and sort everything that’s in there and put the good stuff back so it’s really, really neat. Maybe that would teach them some manners.
I did a Google search on “Which materials are worth recycling?” just out of curiosity. Are we really helping the planet by recycling or are we just making ourselves feel virtuous? Here’s what I found:
1. Recycling paper is kind of a wash environmentally. Too many resources are used to transport, sort, bleach and process used paper to make it really helpful. However, if you recycle paper, more trees can be used for wood rather than paper. Also, there’s less air pollution processing used paper than producing new paper.
2. Aluminum cans – very good to recycle.
3. Glass – also good. Sand may be plentiful, but it’s usually dredged from sandbars in the ocean. Too much sand taken out can lead to erosion and disruption of marine environments.
4. Plastic – made from petroleum, which is non-renewable, but expensive to sort. A lot of plastic to be recycled is shipped to China to be sorted there.
5. Toner and ink cartridges – very good to recycle as the ink is not biodegradable and the cartridges contain toxic materials. Then there’s the money factor – most office supply stores offer money back for recycling the cartridges.
Found a very handy video on eHow.com on what you can recycle and what you can. Always check to find out what your local recycler will and will not accept.
My sister came to visit last weekend and we did one of our favorite things. We went plant shopping at Echter’s in Arvada, CO. I love Echter’s!
Three years ago, I didn’t know the difference between an annual and a perennial. Today I go to a garden center and want to take home one of everything. My sister just laughs at me and reminds me that three years ago, when we began planning the xeriscaping of my backyard, I told her that I didn’t want too many plants to take care of. I didn’t realize that a year later I would be addicted to gardening and buying more things to plant in the yard.
In order to xeriscape my backyard, I first had to submit a plan and have it approved by my homeowner’s association. I thought it seemed rather strange that in Colorado, where summers are very dry and water restrictions always seem to be the norm, that it was perfectly fine with the homeowners association if you planted grass, but xeriscaping had to be approved. My sister explained to me that it was probably because to some, xeriscape means zero scape – filling your yard with rock and calling it xeriscape. For us, xeriscaping had more to do with placement of trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. Placing the deciduous trees and shrubs where they would shade the house and patio from the summer sun, but let the sun shine through in winter, thus saving on utilities. Placing the plants and shrubs that need a little more water together and near the down spout. Placing the very xeric plants in the sunniest and driest spots in the yard. My sister and I did all of it ourselves except for the planting of 4 of the trees. I had some great arms by the end of that year. The result was beautiful, practical and every time I look at the small forest growing in my backyard it makes me smile. The birds, hummingbirds, butterflies, bees and bunnies love it too. Plus, the amazing thing is that it doesn’t require a whole lot of maintenance. However, I may need to tear out some of the patio to make room for more plants. Just kidding. Sort of.
I remember reading a magazine article perhaps a year or two ago which described a day in the life of some celebrity (I don’t recall who), but the article went into great detail about all the things this person did to be environmentally responsible. One of the things had to do with reducing her carbon footprint for the airplane trip she was taking that day. I didn’t really understand exactly what you were supposed to do and was mystified as to how you could calculate an amount for something like that.
Today, I was reading an announcement from United Airlines stating that they have partnered with Conservation International www.conservation.org and Sustainable Travel International www.sustainabletravelinternational.org to make it easy for travelers to offset carbon emissions as a result of their travel by donating money to protect forests or contribute to renewable energy programs. So, I decided to do a little research.
Both websites have Carbon Calculators that are really easy to use. On the Conservation International calculator you select from a range of miles, it calculates your carbon footprint for those miles and gives you a suggestion as to how much to donate. For instance, flying 500 to 1,000 miles (Boston to Atlanta) comes out to a carbon footprint of .6 for one person and the suggested donation is $7. You can go ahead and make a donation right there.
I like the Carbon Calculator on the Sustainable Travel International website. You can enter your starting point, your destination, the number of passengers, flight class and select round trip or one way. So, if I want to run away from Denver to the island of Kauai, my carbon footprint would be 2.46 tons of CO2 and I should make a donation of $88.44. The calculator can also be used for driving, home energy, hotel stays and events. Once you have your calculation, you can go ahead and make your tax deductible contribution. Talk about simple.
Now, if only I could afford that plane ticket to Kauai. Heavy sigh.
Has anyone out there actually done this? And do you do it every time that you travel?
